Remind your kids.....please.

One of our relatives on my wife's side had her 7-year-old run home breathless the other day. Seems as though two middle-age assholes in a van offered her candy if she'd come over to their house and play.

The day after, it was on all Memphis TV stations.

There's too much of this shit happening. I've had chills thinking about that precious little gal being sold and shipped to Thailand or some dark place for one bad move. Hell, she didn't have to move. They could have jumped out and got her, drugged her and that would have been it.

What makes it even more tough is that her mom had tried three times to give her a brother or sister and miscarried each time, and this was going to be their only child.

I told her I wanted to know when/if they found this slime. I'd drive across the country for visitation, then I swear I'd try to kill them myself. For attempted abduction, they'd get what, six months? And then be out to do it again.

It chills me.

Remind your kids, your grandkids, your friend's kids....run, scream, do whatever they can when approached in this way.

 

And people say it's not any more dangerous today than it was 30 years ago... Puhleeze...

 

That's scary.

 

Exactly. It's more organized today. Sex slave markets all over the world. For 7-year-olds.

Like I said, please God, just give me an opportunity to meet these people and I'll do my part to eliminate a share of the problem.

 

I don't know that it is. I know it's very unlikely that unless you lived in Memphis you'd hear about this incident 30 years ago.

 

I have this conversation with my parents pretty regularly. I'm not a parent, and never plan to be one. Don't want to be one. But it's so surreal to me that at some point in my childhood, there's just one day where you're free to go to your friend's house alone. Like one day, my mom walked me across the street. And the next day I just went on my own. Maybe it's because I'm not a parent, but the oddness of that is so weird to me. I guess it's like one day your kid doesn't walk, and the next day he does.

I used to ride my bike four blocks away and go into the convenience store on the corner to buy candy with my allowance money. My brother (five years younger) and I went three streets away to a park and played tennis, just with our bikes. We obviously didn't have cell phones.

If I EVER have a kid, I would never let that thing out of my sight. Seriously. I'd panic every second I wasn't five feet away from it. Too many freaks out there, and no way to protect them.

 

http://www.wmctv.com/story/15562340/marion-police-search-for-possible-child-abductors

this was one of the videos.

 

It's not. It's less dangerous.

 

Walking isn't like that. It's a process. Walking along the couch while hanging on. Trying to take a step and then falling. Trying to take two steps and then falling. It's a process.

So, I imagine, is walking to a friend's house alone. You probably walk him halfway one day then watch the rest of the way. Then 1/4 of the way. Then watch out the window. Then one day let him walk all the way there. First two houses away. Then four houses away. And so on and so forth ...

 

Dick 30 years ago it was just the random pervert.

Now, it's a market.

Yeah you have facebook and various other ways of getting the word out and finding suspects, but no, this is much more complex now.

 

My grandmother used to watch my father like a hawk because of the organized bands of child-snatchers looking for children on the street.

It was the 1940s.

Dick is right. Things are safer now than they've ever been, and if you look at the crime stats it's not even close. We've just gotten infinitely better at scaring the shit out of ourselves.

Doesn't mean it never happens, and Printdust, I'm very glad to hear your relative got away safely.

One other note: around here we get a lot of reports of kids being approached by creeps who try to grab them, but the kid manages to get away and report it to mom or the school. They get a ton of attention. 95% of the time -- and that's probably a low estimate -- it turns out the kid made it up because he or she was running late to school, or with a boyfriend, or something else. That follow-up never get the play the "attempted abduction" does.

 

It's very unlikely that this couple was part of an organized sex-slave ring. If you are going to try to snatch 7-year-olds out of nice neighborhoods, you've got to have better game than want some candy? Come play at our house!